Frank Caracciolo: What do you… what’s your vision for these students or the teachers in general?

Amelia Crerar: Alright, it was mentioned before, so I will just say that again that it’s really student driven. Whatever these children are passionate about, they can present that. If they want to speak in English, they can speak in English. If they want to present in French, they can present in French. If they wanted to try both languages, by all means. If they want to work their with their best friend in the world, or with five of their best friends in the world, they can.

So when something is student driven, I think that a bit of magic happens. It’s their passion. It is whatever they want. I don’t know if children always get the opportunity to lead their project, but that’s what I see, and I think it’s going to be great.

I hope that their their videos are shared widely, that other children watch it, that it becomes as big as those Ted talks that are so famous that we probably all have a favorite one and with our own students in in elementary, I’m sure we’ll be passing those along too, and telling our friends ‘you should watch this, it’s really, really good.’

Frank Caracciolo: Yeah. Phyllis, what about you? What do you see happening for the students, their experience, and doing something like this?

Phyllis Orofino: The other day I was in the school and the teacher asked, she said, ‘Come hear what the kids are talking about.’

She had just touched on a little bit of talking about AI, only because I think a student had asked the question if they could use is certain AI platform to do their work or something like that.

And then they started a discussion on AI and and the children were debating, the advantages, the disadvantages.

So I just kind of poke my head in and one of the students was talking with with such – well I’m going to use that word again – with passion, with a lot of expression, on why they should be using AI.

As I was listening to that, I said, well, this is exactly what we are hoping will happen with the Ted talks. It’s that kind of excitement and enthusiasm… and also who are they talking to? They are talking to their peers, their audience is their peers and this student had a captive audience right then and there, you know.

And I said, ‘oh, we could have filmed THIS!’ You know, it was great.

Hear the complete episode on Spotify

or on

Apple Podcasts